Abstract
The Lyman-Alpha Reference Sample (LARS) and its extension (eLARS) represent an exhaustive campaign to reverse-engineer galaxies. The main goal is to understand how \lya radiation is transported within galaxies: what fraction of it escapes, and what physical properties affect the \lya morphology and radiative transport (e.g., dust and gas content, metallicity, kinematics, properties of the producing and underlying stellar populations). Two galaxies from the sample, LARS02 and LARS09, were observed using the B and C configurations of the Very Large Array to examine the neutral hydrogen emission, which can be used to determine a galaxy's neutral hydrogen (HI) structure and kinematics. Images of the \HI mass surface density and of the intensity weighted \HI velocity field were created at angular scales of $\sim$8 arcseconds, which corresponds to $\sim$5 kpc for LARS02 and $\sim$8 kpc for LARS09. Extended \HI gas is detected at high significance up to $\sim$30 kpc from the optical body of LARS02. LARS09 has a severely disturbed optical morphology; our new \HI observations reveal that LARS09 is interacting with the nearby field galaxy SDSS J082353.65+280622.2. By combining these moment maps with direct imaging of the \lya morphology from the Hubble Space Telescope, this program has produced the first direct comparison of \lya and \HI morphologies. These observations demonstrate concept for a significant observational campaign to produce similar comparisons in the remaining 40 LARS and eLARS galaxies.
Recommended Citation
Fitzgibbon, Kathleen and Cannon, John M.
(2017)
"A Direct Comparison of Lyman-Alpha and Neutral Hydrogen Morphologies,"
Macalester Journal of Physics and Astronomy: Vol. 5:
Iss.
1, Article 1.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/mjpa/vol5/iss1/1